Fund On Blogs

Randell Beck, editor of the Argus Leader, is feeling the heat. In a column yesterday, he wrote: “Those perched on the political fringes have found a home on the Internet. True believers of one stripe or another, no longer content to merely bore spouses and neighbors with their nutty opinions, can now spew forth on their own blogs, thereby playing a pivotal role in creating the polarized climate that dominates debate on nearly every national issue. . . . If Hitler were alive today, he’d have his own blog.”

According to Godwin’s Law, an Internet discussion-group dictum that long predates blogging, when one side in an argument invokes Hitler, it proves he’s lost. And indeed, Mr. Beck’s column announced the Argus Leader’s own tepid entry into the world of blogging.

Mr. Beck: You are a hack, and a dinosaur. You clearly can’t stand it that the “little people” out here aren’t subject to your personal political filter.

Get used to it. We don’t work for you, and particularly after being compared en masse to an infamous homicidal dictator, we aren’t terribly interested in your take on things. Your tar pit isn’t getting any smaller–but your influence is.

I want to coin “Mike M’s” law: which is the nauseating speed of the interval that blogging geeks will stumble over themselves to appear clever by citing Goodwin’s law when Hitler is mentioned.

In more serious terms, I’m not sure if the media reaction to the internet is more jealousy or fear. Jealousy that blogs don’t have editors dictating content, or fear that it doesn’t take anything special to report the news. I’m sure it’s both.